WINDOM, MINNESOTA – In her small, but tidy living room Maria Francisca Soto keeps God close to her heart.

Everywhere my eye turns I see traces of her faith.

It’s the first thing I sense when I walk through her door on a rainy summer afternoon and it’s the last thing I see as I leave her home: From the cross of golden palm leaves on her living room wall, to the simple prayer for baby Jesus that adorns the back of her front door.

Near her dining room table she’s hung a religious painting of a man praying before he breaks bread. In the kitchen, she keeps candles with images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Jesus on the cross.

For Francisca, it’s her religious faith that sustains her in this prairie land that is not her own, a land that has blessed her and cursed her both since she arrived here in 2001.

“I ask that God illuminate our life every day that passes,” says Francisca, 49.

Like many Latino immigrants, Francisca and her husband Gilberto Soto immigrated to the United States for economic reasons, hoping to pay off debts and also help their daughter Cecilia Carolina.

In El Salvador, a civil war left their homeland economically devastated and after Hurricane Mitch tore through the country in 1998, many Salvadorans, including the Sotos, received visas to work in the United States.

The couple arrived in California in 1998, but after struggling financially, Gilberto left their apartment near downtown Los Angeles and headed to Windom in 2000. Francisca followed about a year later.

Like other immigrants, they found the competition for jobs in California tough, and the salaries weren’t enough to cover their costs. When Gilberto’s niece moved to Minnesota and described the well-paying jobs and the low housing costs, they decided to move.

“(Windom) is a calm town, there are no parties, people go to the lake to fish. I like this tranquility,” says Francisca. “In California you can’t walk around even in your dreams, because they steal your purse and take everything.”

But in the four years since arriving, Francisca has struggled adjusting to the fierce Minnesota winters, learning English, and finding her way in a new town, all while trying to keep financially afloat.

It makes sense that she would turn to her faith, and that in turn, her religious faith would produce a friendship with fellow parishioner Brenda Renczykowski.

The women met two years ago at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, the only Catholic church in Windom.

At first, Gilberto resisted going to church, but Francisca insisted.

“I said ‘You know what, I need to go to church. It doesn’t matter (that we don’t speak English),” she says. “God understands every language and I’m going to go.”

They entered St. Francis Xavier on a Sunday morning and were greeted by Reverend Andrew Olsem, who stretched his hand to greet the couple.

“I said ‘Sorry, no speak English. Speak Spanish,” says Francisca.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” Rev. Andrew told her, and immediately went to find Brenda Renczykowski, one of the church’s parishioners who speaks Spanish. The two women shook hands and Brenda has been her “voice” ever since, says Francisca.

“As in all parts, there are people who discriminate, but there are more good people,” says Francisca. “Everyone here is good. Brenda takes me everywhere, she’s always checking in.”

She came to understand friendship on a deeper level through Brenda, who has helped Francisca navigate her way through complicated health issues.

Francisca suffers from several work injuries, including carpal tunnel and knee problems due to several falls she suffered while working at the meat-packing plant PM Windom. And since Francisca doesn’t drive, it’s Brenda who drives her to doctor appointments and interprets for her during hospital visits.

Brenda in turn, says she can empathize with the Soto’s language barriers, having learned Spanish as an adult in college.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like to live someplace and not be able to take care of myself – go to doctor and tell them what is wrong,” says Brenda, a high school Spanish and English teacher. “I would hope if I was in same situation someone would help me.”

During his time in Windom, Gilberto says only a small percentage, about 20 percent of people, have outwardly expressed their discontent with the immigrant population.

“There will always be people who don’t (want immigrants here in Windom), but here in church everyone talks to us, greets us, says goodbye,” says Gilberto, 61, pointing to gestures such as Rev. Andrew’s purchase of Spanish miselettes so the Latino parishioners could follow mass in their native language.

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

Though it’s been five years since the Sotos last visited El Salvador, the couple does what they can to recreate the flavors and aromas that remind them of home.

On any given day, Francisca’s tiny kitchen is overwhelmed with the smells that once filled her kitchen in El Salvador – the cinnamon of her home-made horchata drink, the aroma of corn from her pupusas filled with cheeses.

For Gilberto, all it takes is flipping open his photo album and he’s transported back to the days when the city’s stadium was filled with the roar of fans as they watched the soccer tournaments he once organized. The smell of the firecrackers, the frenzy of the crowds along the parade route when he served as grand marshal before a tournament – it all brings a smile to his face today.

“When you come here you have this desire to return to your country. You’re filled with a sense of desperation, but at the same time you adjust,” says Gilberto.

Memories can be comforting, but the couple nonetheless aches because there’s one thing that food and photo albums can’t recreate, and that’s their relationship with their daughter Carolina, the only daughter they left behind in El Salvador. The couple also has two grown sons.

Every day Francisca lights her candles and prays for many things, but the desire she harbors closest to her heart is her wish to one day be reunited with Carolina, who is married with three children and lives in their hometown of Nueva Guadalupe.

At 34, Carolina has long walked the path of an adult, but for Francisca can’t help but want to help Carolina despite the miles that separate them.

Carolina has tried to persuade her parents to return to El Salvador, pointing out that Francisca’s work injuries prevent her from working in a meat processing plant.

“But I tell her no I have to get healthy and God willing I will. I know I have strength,” says Francisca, who left PM Windom in 2003 and now works as a babysitter.

She remembers how hard it was to survive in El Salvador, where she worked both as a seamstress (sewing bulk orders of pants from home) as well as a cook, making and selling pupusas, sandwiches, atole (a corn drink), and cheese from a stall in the town’s main plaza.

“With so much violence in El Salvador you couldn’t make a living from your business,” says Francisca.

To make her point, she brings out their photo album and scans it looking for the photo of Carolina on the day of her graduation. I peer at the photo in which Carolina’s face glows as she holds up her bachelor’s degree to teach.

“She can’t find job and it’s been more than 10 years since she got her university degree,” says Francisca.

Instead, she spends her time making pupusas, atole and tamales – everything that Francisca taught her to make and sells it in the plaza, just as her mother did.

“Over there what we have an abundance of are teachers, so they offer them jobs far, far away, near the border of Honduras and Guatemala in remote areas, where they don’t have running water,” says Gilberto.

The Sotos have always understood that leaving El Salvador would come with its sacrifices, but Francisca never expected it would be so difficult. She sometimes dreams of calling Spanish language television show host Don Francisco, who often reunites Latino families, to ask if he can bring Carolina for a visit to Minnesota.

During my week-long visit to Windom, I make several visits to the Soto’s home and the only time Francisca breaks down and cries is when she speaks of Carolina.

When I ask her if she misses El Salvador, her voice wavers and tears well up in her eyes. “Ah yes,” Francisca says. “More than anything (I miss) my children, my daughter who is over there.”

Last year, one of her three grandchildren in El Salvador (who call Francisca “Mámi”) asked her by phone on their birthday: “Mámi, do you know what I wished for?

“I sent you money, did you buy a birthday cake?” Francisca said.

“Yes, Mámi we made a wish”

“What did you wish for?”

“For our Mamíta to come.”

One day the Sotos hope to return to El Salvador to reunite with them. Their hope is to stay in Windom as long as it takes to save enough money to open a small restaurant in Nueva Guadalupe.

“You come searching for a better life, but the truth is life has gotten very tough, very hard here,” says Francisca, adding that the job market has gotten more competitive in Minnesota with more immigrants coming from Latin America.

Despite the hardships, Francisca says she has faith that everything will work out.

She may not be able to embrace her daughter in person, but everyday she says a prayer and asks God to protect them. And she always gives thanks for the opportunities they’ve been given in the United States.

“You have these great ambitions and you want everything to be easier, but things don’t always work out,” says Francisca. “Today I was reading in the Bible that everyone must carry their own cross. God, I don’t ask you to take off my cross, but to adjust it so that I can carry it.”

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